Fatigue

Forgive the infrequent posting.
Crap technology continues alongside busy weeks, jumbled thoughts and a lack of faith that these words mean anything anyway.

I ran out of Seroquel last Friday. There was a box I thought was full, it turned out to only be half full so my supply ran out and I didn't have a prescription. No matter, I had an appointment on Tuesday with my psychiatrist, it would just be a few missed doses. 3 in fact. 3. I took one Friday night so it was just getting through Saturday to Monday.
Predictably it was a bit harder to get off to sleep but I managed alright. I have an audiobook of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland read by a narrator named Peter Yearsley and there's a soporific quality to his voice which when combined with the dreamlike words of Lewis Carroll acts in a manner I find far more effective than Temazepam. So I got through. Although there was this big party on Saturday night so I didn't get a great night of sleep then. But no matter, I was fine and Tuesday came and I got my prescription and my drugs and all was to be righted in the world.

Tuesday night I took my normal dose of Seroquel and went off to bed. I was staying with my parents (another story) and my Mum came in to wake me around half past 9. Dragging myself out of bed felt like dragging myself out of my own skin it was so painful. I spent the morning in a stupor, my body weighed down with the weight of the most overwhelming fatigue. After lunch I couldn't take it anymore and went to lie down for a quick nap. I was woken six hours later.

Wednesday night I dutifully took my Seroquel again, shrugging off the day and thinking to myself that it must have just been a temporary readjustment to my brain chemistry but that Thursday would be better. Thursday I wrenched myself from bed around 10 and came home from my parents house and rather than doing laundry or going to the gym or attending German class I dozed in my bed, occasionally getting up to wander dumbly around the house wondering at what it was I was supposed to be doing.

Friday morning I was due in at work at 8.45am. I knew there was no chance I could risk being in a Seroquel haze so I didn't take it Thursday night. I woke up before my alarm on Friday and made it through the day clear headed. That was until the work Christmas party when my head did get a little cloudy and yes it was a bit of a later night than I had anticipated and when I got home and held the Seroquel tablet in my hand and thought about how I had to be in at work again today it just seemed like too great a risk so I tossed it into my pill box.

This morning, despite the still cloudy head and the late-ish night, I was awake by 8am. I wasn't due in at work until the afternoon so I spent the morning catching up on laundry and puzzling over why I was feeling so fractious and hungry and overwhelmed. Fatigue. Of course. Without the Seroquel and with a social life I don't sleep enough so I am fatigued. With the Seroquel I have the chemically induced paralysing fatigue.

I know eventually my body adjusts to the Seroquel and then even though I still sleep too much and spend my mornings staring into space I somehow accommodate it and muddle through. But right now I'm just so tired. And I'm so aware of how tired I am and I'm also so acutely aware of how rapidly my mental state starts to unravel just because I get tired.

I should have gone to bed already tonight.

So it's 1am now. I have things to do tomorrow so I can't risk another day of dozing or afford a six hour nap. No Seroquel it is.

Unexpected

My weekend without the internet was a partial success. I had to go on Pinterest to get the recipe for chocolate zucchini brownies (don't knock them till you've tried them) to give to my sister but apart from that it was a relaxing weekend devoid of antagonism from the internet.

Last night I finished watching an episode of Doctor Who (I've become a Whovian of late) at around 10.15 after which I took my medication, brushed my teeth and went to bed. It usually takes me a little while to fall asleep but last night wasn't a particularly restless night, I fell asleep within what I would consider a normal amount of time.

This morning however I was woken by my aunt asking me if I had to go to work this morning. It was 8am and I had slept through my 7am and 7.15 alarms without even stirring. I tried to get up but it was like I was bound to the bed. I fell asleep again and woke up at 8.30 which was when I decided to call work and tell them I wouldn't be in today. Then I fell asleep and woke up just after 11. By my estimation I've just had 12 hours of sleep.

There is no obvious reason why I needed 12 hours of sleep last night. I had a very quiet weekend with no late nights, I'd gotten to sleep at a reasonable time last night and I haven't had any recent changes to my medication. My body just occasionally does things which are unexpected.

These curve balls are challenging because they disrupt my daily life and remind me that I'm still a sick person. I feel like there's a real pull with this disorder between doing nothing other than deal with the side effects, the mood swings, the unexpected 12 hours of sleep or trying to get on with my life and engage with the rest of the world.

I want to be a reliable employee but it's hard. I cannot ignore the things that crop up because of my bipolar disorder anymore than I could ignore a serious back injury. The difference is that when these things pass; when my mood stabilises or I've gotten an excessive need for sleep out of my system, I appear to be fine. I'm not though. I fight every day to keep strange and often violent thoughts at bay. I shut out voices that whisper because I know when they shout I can hear only them. I suppress the memories of my lowest points because if I dwell on them there seems there is no hope for me at all.

So unexpectedly I have a day to myself. I'm not quite sure what to do with it. Amazingly I'm still feeling quite fatigued, perhaps from oversleeping, so I'm not sure that anything energetic is possible. If I'm to be guided purely by my wants then today will involve watching more Doctor Who and eating a donut at some stage. We'll see. The unexpected happens so often to me that I dare not make too firm plans.